


See You In The Night

by Shoshanna Gold (shoshannagold)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:13:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoshannagold/pseuds/Shoshanna%20Gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nix always comes back. Set after 'Why We Fight.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	See You In The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a work of fiction based on the HBO mini-series.
> 
> Many thanks to [](http://grey-bard.livejournal.com/profile)[**grey_bard**](http://grey-bard.livejournal.com/) for the emergency beta, and to [](http://mydocuments.livejournal.com/profile)[**mydocuments**](http://mydocuments.livejournal.com/), who held my hand at 5 am.
> 
> The title is from the song "Fall Out," by Train.

_Buchloe, Germany - April 1945_

Dick stopped in the doorway of the room he'd taken as his bedroom and stared at Nix, who was sitting on his bed. "I thought you had gone." Nix had left the study shortly after Dick had told him they were headed to Thalham, not bothering with a much of a goodbye beyond a nod that Dick had taken that as a farewell. Nix hadn't been much for conversation lately.

He should know better than to assume anything when it came to Lewis Nixon.

Nix looked up from the map spread across his lap. "Not only is the house where I'm billeted dry, it's cold. Didn't think you'd mind sharing some warmth tonight."

Dick nodded. This was an altogether different Nix than the one Dick had become resigned to over the past months, the one who had been brimming with anger for a while now, quiet fury that he wouldn't acknowledge, much less talk with Dick about. Dick hadn't been the only one to notice it, either. Sink had sent him to participate in Operation Varsity to shake him out of whatever funk he was in. Dick had been furious himself when he'd learned that his best friend was jumping deep into German territory, and even more angry with Sink when Nix had come back more broken than ever.

But Nix's mood had improved as they moved further into Germany, as it became increasingly clear that the Nazis weren't putting up much of a fight anymore. It wasn't their expected victory that had pacified Nix, it was knowing that they weren't going to lose any more of their men, have them killed by boot officers or sacrificed to Sink's desire for another raise in his pay grade, more metal on his chest. Good soldiers had died, good friends like Buck Compton had been knocked off their feet, and Nix had taken each loss to heart. Some would say that it made him less of a soldier, this sensitivity, but as far as Dick could see, the value he placed on the lives and well-being of the men showed what kind of man he was, and he was a better officer for it.

He suspected that the letter from Cathy played its part, too: Nix would be going home to a life much different from the one which he'd joined the Army to escape.

Dick stayed in the door, content to stand and watch Nix for a minute. He felt the knot he'd been carrying in his stomach since Holland uncurl just a little. They were winning the war; his men had roofs over their heads and beds to sleep on, so at least those of them that managed to get to sleep tonight would do so in comfort; and Nix was coming back to him.

The only light in the room came from small lamps lit on either side of the bed, their soft glow casting shadows across the wood floor and warmly papered walls. Nix was sitting back against the pillows on the bed in the room Dick had taken to be the master suite, its four gleaming posters marking the boundaries of one of the biggest mattresses Dick had come across in Europe. He'd taken off his boots and blouse and was sitting on Dick's bed barefoot, in just his trousers and t-shirt, suspenders still shrugged off his shoulders and bunched up by his thighs.

He looked tired, deep circles under his eyes attesting to more than one sleepless night. He hadn't shaved since the morning, and a five o'clock shadow darkened his face. But his countenance was thoughtful, not angry, and he was absorbed in whatever work he was doing, interested in something other than procuring a bottle of Vat 69 for the first time in far too long. He was the best thing Dick had seen in months, and he wondered if he stared at Nix long enough, he'd be able to wipe out everything he'd seen today at the prison camp, replacing each shocking, horrific sight with the image of his best friend, somber, serious, and looking more peaceful than Dick had seen him in a long time.

Nix had gone back to looking at his map, every now and then consulting one of the little notepads he was never without. He didn't look like he was planning on going anywhere anytime soon, and while the man in Dick was more than fine with that, the major had some concerns.

"Lew. Is this a good idea?"

Nix looked up again and smiled, slightly. Dick found himself smiling back, because the day had yet to come when Lewis Nixon's smile failed to bring one to his own face. "You mean because there's a colonel and two-star general bunking at what used to be the mayor's house just down the road?" Nix asked.

Dick nodded. "That's part of it, yes."

"Apparently colonels don't see cattle cars with piles of corpses rotting away daily. Nor do two-star generals, shockingly enough. It's thrown them for a bit of a loop, to say the least." Nixon's tone was dry.

"Whereas intelligence officers and battalion commanders are made of sterner stuff?" Dick leaned on the door frame and raised his eyebrows at Nixon.

"Nah, we just have better ways of dealing with some things." Nixon shrugged. "Speirs came across a bottle of brandy in his, uh, search today, before … " He paused and looked down at the map on his lap for a second. "Anyway, it was the good stuff. Really good stuff, actually, and Speirs thought maybe the general and the colonel were perhaps more in need of a good, stiff drink than Malarkey or Randleman. Not that they don't deserve one, too, after today."

"Wait a second, Lew. You're telling me you gave up a bottle? And that Speirs voluntarily gave away something of value? To Sink and Taylor? "

"I've never liked brandy much. Too sweet."

"Uh huh. And Speirs?"

"Yeah. There may have been a bit of a trade. The lady of the house where I'm quartered had some very nice pieces of jewellery that I thought might please Mrs. Speirs."

"Nice bit of bartering on your part."

"Thanks. Ron and I dropped off the bottle together, and Sink and Taylor were, well," Nixon chuckled. "They thought it was the perfect way to cap off the three bottles of wine they'd had with dinner. Or maybe instead of dinner. Nobody around here seems to want to eat much right now." His expression darkened, and he looked down at the map again, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it away and looked at Dick. "Anyway, I don't think either of them is going to be performing bed checks tonight. And even if they did, it's not like they'd be shocked to not find me in mine."

"They might be shocked to find you in mine, however."

Nix reached for the pack of cigarettes beside him and lit one. "Your front door is locked and chained. The former occupants also seem to be overly fond of wind chimes. Not many people hang them on doorknobs, but there's no accounting for European taste, I suppose."

That explained the soft jingling Dick had heard after Nixon had left the study. He'd assumed it was just the wind. "You intelligence officers know all kinds of nifty tricks."

Nix drew on his cigarette and shrugged. "The army takes our training very seriously. Makes sure we have an eye for detail, too. For example, if you'd stop standing in that doorway and closed the door, you'd notice that it, too, locks. And I did a bit of scouting around and it seems that if I were to fall out of bed and roll over a foot, I'd be perfectly concealed by the bed skirt. Chimes tend to startle me, you know, so it's more than likely that's what would happen if somebody were to get past the two locks on the front door."

"You've got this all planned out, don't you? All you're missing is somebody standing sentry."

"Uh, well, Ron volunteered, but – " Dick gaped at him, and Nix shook his head and grinned. "Dick, c'mon. The man has eyes not only in the back of his head, but on either side, too. Of course he knows. He doesn't give a damn. We don't expect a lot of trouble tonight because most of the men are pretty shaken up, but Ron's let the NCOs know that he's in charge tonight, because you're not feeling well."

"I never get sick." Dick stood up straight and moved out of the doorway, pulling the door shut behind him. Sure enough, it had a key on the inside. Dick locked it and tossed the key to Nix.

Nix caught it and put it on the bedside table. "You're not sick. Not really. Just a bit of bad beef with lunch. You'll be right as rain in the morning."

"And I'm the only one who ate this bad meat? All the officers had lunch together, Nix."

"I'm not feeling great, either. And Harry hasn't stopped vomiting since we left the camp. That's actually true, by the way."

Dick stopped. "Really? Is he okay? Should I – "

Nix shook his head. "Roe and Lip are with him, and Speirs is looking in on them. If Roe thought you needed to be there, he'd damn well have you there, you know that."

Dick nodded. The only higher power Eugene Roe deferred to was God.

"He just – needs to get today out of his system somehow." Nix sighed drew hard on his cigarette again. "We all need to do that, I think," he said, looking up at Dick.

"And your way is to elaborately plot a way to spend the night with me in the middle of a town teeming with high-ranking military personnel."

"I don't want to be alone tonight, Dick."

He'd forgotten how Nixon could take him by surprise, how sometimes he let all the glibness fall away and he'd say something that showed a degree of trust in what they had that took Dick's breath away. "Yeah." Dick said quietly. He could give a little here, too. "Neither do I."

"Okay, then." Nix nodded and Dick nodded back, holding his gaze for a second before turning towards the bathroom. He washed his face and brushed his teeth. By looking at the mirror at a certain angle, he could see Nix on the bed. The bottle he had purloined from the study was by the bed, but it didn't look a whole lot more empty than it had been when Nix had taken it. The glass beside it was mostly untouched, as well. The saucer Nix had been using as an ashtray was overflowing, though, and as Dick watched, Nixon put out his cigarette and, seemingly without thought, lit another one and drew down deep on it, making another mark on the map of Germany in his lap after flipping through his notebook for a minute.

Dick took off his boots and then his uniform, hanging it neatly in the armoire. He relished the warmth of the fire against his legs, the light feeling that came with being clad in only a t-shirt and shorts, after those endless days and nights wrapped in as many layers as possible, trying to not freeze to death in the Ardennes. He shrugged his shoulders a few times, and rolled his head down, trying to work out the knots. He was always tense, and his body took the brunt of it, but today had been – well. His neck felt like it was made of pure steel, and he had a feeling the headache he'd been fighting all day was winning.

"Come here." Nix's voice was low. He'd set his map and notebook to the side, and butted out the cigarette, half-smoked. "Dick, c'mere. Let me take care of that for you."

Dick stopped rolling his shoulders back and looked at Nix, tilting his head a little. Nix looked back, his gaze warm and inviting. After a minute Dick nodded, and sat down on the bed, maneuvering until he was sitting just in front of Nix. He heard Nix rubbing his hands together, to warm them, and then his strong hands were on Dick's shoulders, kneading the taut muscles.

"Jesus, Dick. You're wound so tight it's any wonder you don't snap." Nix paused. "Then again, when would you have time, between commanding a battalion and cleaning up the damage from my recent temper tantrums."

That was so much like Nix, not only willing to take responsibility for his actions, but to go after himself for them. Dick had never let him get away with it, and, once again, he cursed whoever had taught Nix to be so hard on himself. "You had a rough patch. It happens to best of us."

Nix's thumbs pressed into his shoulder blades, moving up and down in little circles. "Yeah. But you have a tendency to want to run into fields of armed Nazis, guns blazing, when you're going through something, while I break windows and drown in every bottle in sight."

"You have never not been here when we needed you to be," said Dick, soft but insistent. "You've kept me alive, too, Nix, you know you have. You're the one who holds me back from charging that field, yours is the only voice I hear when bombs are falling and bullets are coming at us."

Nix was quiet for a minute. "Tuck your chin down," he said finally, his voice gentle.

Dick complied, dropping his shoulders and trying to touch his chin to his sternum. Nix smoothed his hands over the newly exposed cords in Dick's neck, fingers sliding beneath the collar of his t-shirt. And then they were gone, and Dick was being kissed, a series of soft caresses upon the line where his shoulders met his neck.

He shivered as a thrill went up his spine. He pressed back and Nix's arms went around him, pulling him close so that there was nothing but the thin cloth of their undergarments between his back and Nix's chest, Nix's head tucked into his shoulder.

It once might have seemed wrong, to be this content after what they'd seen today. That was war, though. You took comfort when and where you found it, because you didn't know what the next day held. Today was more proof of that. He thought about the men he'd seen in that camp, and wondered when the last time any of them had known comfort like he had at this moment, a soft bed; a warm house; loving hands moving on his body, seeking to ease his burdens. Good God, those men. That camp.

"Did you know?"

Nix's hold on Dick slackened, and Dick turned to look at him. Nix stared at Dick for a minute, his expression bewildered, a bit distant. Dick was going to clarify his question when Nixon spoke, tuning into Dick's thoughts like they were listening to the same station on the radio, the way he always did.

"Funny you should ask, I've been asking myself the same thing all day. And I just don't know what to tell you. There isn't an easy answer to that question."

Dick moved so that they were sitting side by side, leaning back against the pillows, too. "No. I didn't expect there to be." He looked at Nix, who had lit another cigarette. "Will you tell me what you do know?"

Nix rubbed his hand over his eyes. "God, I barely know where to start. Okay. We knew about the persecution. You heard the stories coming out of Germany before the war, right?"

Dick nodded. Stories of massive pyres of books burned by the Nazi party, streets covered with glass from shop front windows broken by the SS, Jewish refugees fleeing to Palestine. There'd been a lot of stories over the last ten years, most too incredible to even imagine possible. Until today. "I thought a lot of them were propaganda."

"I know, because they sounded too unbelievable to be anything else. But the weird thing is that none of the other Allied countries admitted to starting them. And it wasn't us. We spread them, sure. Great way to get people on board for another war with Germany, when we'd barely cleaned up from the last one. But we didn't make them up. Then there was Pearl Harbor and we didn't need to motivate anybody anymore, the entire country wanted blood. But these stories kept coming." Nix finished his cigarette, but he didn't move to light another one. "And then we invaded Normandy," he said, his voice oddly flat.

"We'd interrogate POWs as soon as you guys caught them. They were surprisingly eager to talk, a lot of them, but mostly they didn't know anything, about as much as one of our PFCs would know if the Germans caught them. But the eleventh guy I interviewed was a captain in the 101st Panzer division. And it was the strangest thing to happen to me in the war to that point, because he completely broke down when I asked him about his girlfriend."

Nix shook his head. "I was throwing soft balls, Dick, trying to get him comfortable enough to open up about something so that he'd talk about everything. So I ask him if he has a girl, and this guy, who was cold as ice since he'd been captured, had stonewalled two other guys before me, starts crying. Sobbing, really. It was hard to understand him, and I didn't believe what he was saying at first, so I went through four translators. They all gave me basically the same story, though.

"This guy had been dating a Jewish girl, his next door neighbour. He'd loved her his entire life, and two days before he shipped out, she and her entire family disappeared. He went to bed one night after seeing her home, everything was fine, he got up the next morning to have breakfast with her family, and they're gone. Completely vanished. The house had been looted and they clearly hadn't packed bags. He questioned the entire street, and none of the neighbors admitted to seeing anything, except one small girl, who described an SS truck that had been on the street the day before, before her mother could shut her up.

"He was sure she'd been taken, that the SS had arrested the family. So I think, okay, politically subversive, maybe, somebody had said something that pissed off the wrong Nazi. But her father was a banker, her mother was a housewife, and why take the entire family?"

Nix stopped talking and reached for the glass by the bed, downing it in one swallow. He got up and went to the sink, rinsing the glass and poured himself some water. He drank two glasses, quickly, and then gestured to ask if Dick wanted any. Dick shook his head. Nix drank one more and then rejoined Dick on the bed, sitting hip to hip, before he started talking again.

"I mean, if some POW said to you that Hitler is running massive death camps for Jews, Gypsies, and god knows who else, you'd have thought he was just vindictive or crazy. But when ten guys tell you some variation on the same story, you start to pay attention. When another S-3 gets the same kind of story from ten other guys, you look twice. Nothing we saw made any sense, though. So either these guys were all wrestling with incredible guilt or had all been given some version of this insane story to tell if they were captured. It held up, though, when rougher tactics were used."

"Torture," Dick said, trying not to sound judgemental.

"Yeah. Torture." Nix took a deep breath and let it out hard. "The official line, when anybody in intelligence bothers to offer any explanation at all, is that desperate times make for desperate measures. I wasn't in on any of it, they save that for the higher-ups, thank God, but I heard stories."

"Is this why you didn't like being at Regiment very much?" Nix spent a lot of time on the front line, more than any other intelligence officer Dick knew of. He got results, so it hadn't been a problem. In fact, now that Dick thought about it, Nix had started doing really badly after they'd come off the line, and they'd both spent a month at the American base in Lorraine logging office hours to catch up on the endless amount of paper work that came with command positions.

"I couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys sometimes, Dick. We're a liberating force, and we're beating people with rubber hoses? That's not the war I signed up to fight."

"Yeah." Nix looked as unhappy as he had for the past month again, and Dick put his hand on Nix's knee, squeezing softly. "The usual rules don't apply here, Lew. We do our best to keep the men safe and alive, we do what needs to be done, and then we figure out a way to live with it." He wasn't saying anything Nix didn't know or probably hadn't said to himself a several dozen times since their first jump into France, but it never hurt to hear it from somebody else.

Nix leaned against him, his head resting against Dick's shoulder, and lit another cigarette. Usually Dick would object to the smoke in his face, but Nix wasn't smoking this one, just holding it and watching it burn. "Lew?"

"There's more. God, there's so much more." said Nix, pulling away a little and finally drawing on the cigarette. "Do you want to hear about it?"

"I want to hear whatever you can bear to tell me, but I don't need to hear it tonight."

"I've been thinking about how to tell you about all this for a while." Nix laughed humourlessly. "Since last June, actually, so a pretty long while."

"You couldn't have thought I wouldn't believe you."

"No," Nix said, putting out the cigarette and leaning against Dick again. "No, I know you well enough to that you'd believe every word out of my mouth. I just didn't want to tell you. Today forced my hand, though."

"Lew. You aren't hoping to shelter me from this, are you?"

"It's a little late for that, isn't it?" said Nix wryly. "But, no, Dick. Christ, I just don't want you to hear it from somebody else because at least with me you can be a human being, not Major Winters. That wouldn't be the case if the first time you heard about gas chambers and death camps was in a staff meeting."

Gas chambers. Death camps. Just the words filled Dick with horror and revulsion, and he didn't even know any of the details yet. After what he'd seen and heard today at the camp, he had a feeling that he had no idea what kind of evil man was capable of inflicting upon his fellow human beings. "Death camps?"

Nix looked at him with grim sympathy. "Yeah, death camps."

"Is that what you're marking on that map?"

Nix reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the map, spreading out over their knees. "I started keeping notes after we determined that most, if not all, of what the Germans we captured were telling us was true. When we'd hook up with another regiment, I'd check what I had against what the other guys knew, and we thought we'd developed a pretty clear picture of where everything was. I didn't know about this one, though, had never heard it mentioned at all. I'd never really had time to chart them out, or the inclination, but tonight – if we're going to come across another one, I want to be able to give the men advance warning. Not sure that it'll do much good, but at least we'll know to have more medics along. And, clearly, we can't count on command to let us know about the camps. They know about them, they must, but they aren't ready to deal with them officially yet, from what I can tell."

Dick looked at the map, tracing a finger from X to X, counting them all. "You were only up here for about an hour before I came up, right?"

"About that, I think."

"There's fifty camps marked here, Nix."

"I know." He gestured to the notepad. "I got through about half of that. But I don't think they're all like the one we came across today. Like Sink said, some are bigger. Some are probably smaller, too. I marked down anything that sounded remotely like some kind of Nazi holding facility."

"My God." Dick couldn't look away from the map. He pointed to one of the marks with a circle around it. "What does that mean?"

"Two or more corroborations that there are gas chambers there." Nix turned to the bedside table again, but he didn't take anything, just looked at it like he couldn't decide if he wanted another drink, another cigarette, or both. Before he could make up his mind, Dick solved the problem for him by tugging gently at Nix's shoulder. Nix turned back to him, and Dick took Nix's right hand in his left, intertwining their fingers.

Looking down at their joined hands, Nix nodded. With his free hand he touched Dick's cheek then slid his fingers into Dick's hair, pulling him close for a kiss. It was maybe meant to be chaste, but Dick opened his mouth and licked his way into Nix's. Nix responded enthusiastically, and the spark that always hovered between them lit.

Maybe this was sacrilege, thought Dick, wrapping his arms around Nix and tangling their legs together, but maybe the only way to reaffirm life in the midst of all this death was to feel something, anything, and why not passion? It had been there for them when they'd been battling Sobel's idiocy at Toccoa and Aldbourne; when they'd lost their first men in Normandy.

As he slowly kissed his way down Nix's throat, using his teeth and tongue now and then, never with enough force to leave a mark, he thought of the bullet that had missed taking Nix's life by a quarter of an inch in Holland. He'd checked Nix over head to toe as soon as they'd had four walls and a door that locked around them, reassuring himself that he hadn't lost him by touching every inch of Nix, burying himself deep inside Nix's body, Nix under him, moaning and pleading as Dick staved off their pleasure, wanting them to stay there, like that, for as long as possible.

He lifted his head for another kiss, and Nix came to him eagerly, their mouths meeting softly, warmth filling Dick. Nix ran his hand along Dick's side, slipping it under the waistband of his shorts, but stopping on his hip, caressing the hollow there, a tender touch clearly meant to soothe rather than excite, just as their kisses were more like lazy explorations, as they reacquainted themselves with each other's bodies after weeks without. He'd missed Nix, missed his warmth, the feeling of relief that only came when Nix was within touching distance.

They sheltered and cared for each other in a thousand different ways that went mostly unseen by the rest of the battalion, save a few Toccoa men who'd been around them long enough to pick up on it. Dick had no illusions that they were hiding anything from Lip's careful attention, just as he knew that Roe had sent Nix to him in Bastogne, when Dick had given the men all he was wearing but his last two layers. Nix had dragged him into the deep foxhole in which he'd entrenched himself, its roof and floor of pine branches providing some insulation from the snow, their scent a bittersweet reminder of Christmas at home. Nix had been so angry when he found out how little Dick had on, scolding him as he'd warmed him with his hands and lips, building heat and pleasure that Dick had been sure would be forever frozen, rendered glacial by the Belgian winter.

Now, Nix pressed himself as close as he could to Dick, seeking warmth for himself, and Dick wrapped his arms tight around Nix, rested his leg over his hip to bring him as near as possible, so close he could feel Nix's heartbeat thrumming through his body.

Dick watched Nix slip into depression these last few months, more helpless than he'd ever felt. He hadn't been able to stop the downward spiral that Nix embarked upon, but he'd pushed and prodded and, yes, nagged, and above all, he'd made certain that Nix knew this option was available anytime he wanted, be it a temporary solution or a lasting cure. He hadn't thought it would take this long for Nix to come back to him, but when Nix had appeared in his study a few hours ago, he'd known they'd finally come together like this again, that Nix had forgiven himself enough to take what Dick offered, to feel like he had something he could give back.

They lay there like that for several minutes, as tangled up in each other as any two people could be. Nix's head was tucked up Dick's chin, and he was lazily sucking on the skin just over his collarbone. Dick would have to be careful not to be caught shirtless for a few days, but he usually was anyway, not only because he thought it unbefitting of a commander to be caught looking less than strac, but because he'd been wearing Nix's marks of ownership since Toccoa.

Nix had apologized like crazy the first time he realized he'd left a love bite on the inside of Dick's thigh, but Dick had pointed out that it was unlikely that anybody else was going be looking at Dick that closely. They didn't shower communally like the enlisted men, and if he was injured in a training accident or, later, in combat, nobody was going to think it was anything but another bruise. He'd admitted to Nix that he liked it, that when they were alone in their bunks at night he'd press his finger into whatever marks Nix had left and know that he wasn't alone. He'd worn evidence of what they shared into every skirmish and battle, this little bit of Nix he could take wherever he went, even when he had no idea where the man himself was.

"Do you want to go to sleep?" Nix asked, after lifting his head for another kiss.

He did. He was exhausted, tired in the way that he was every time they got to safety after engaging with the enemy, for an hour or a day or a week, though he never let himself succumb to the soul-deep fatigue until every last man under him was accounted for, fed, and either sleeping or drinking or doing whatever it was they did when they had a moment of privacy. Dick didn't ask questions, or look very hard for transgressions, and he'd certainly never report his men for finding whatever solace available to them. He respected their right to privacy and they, in turn, respected his. It was easy to treat people well, to accord them the same dignity he wished to receive in return. Why didn't more people know that?

"Dick?"

"I don't think I can sleep, Nix."

"Yeah." Nix nodded. "Yeah, I get that."

"Tell me about the gas chambers."

Nix propped himself up his elbow, and looked down at Dick. He didn't protest, though Dick knew he wanted to. He just sighed and said, "I'm going to need another cigarette."

Dick just nodded. Nix sighed again, and leaned down to brush a kiss against Dick's forehead before turning, resting with his back to on the pillows again as he lit up and started to talk.

The German soldiers they'd captured had been sure that something awful was being done to Jews – and the Roma, and Communists, and handicapped people, and Poles, and anybody else that the Nazi regime deemed unfit or unwanted. No one was able to provide solid details, just conjecture and incomplete stories, until the 82nd Airborne had raided a farm in Burgundy and found an entire Jewish family hidden there, three generation living in a wine cellar no bigger than the average prison cell. They were Polish, and had been in hiding since Germany invaded Poland in 1939, protected by friends and resistance groups. They'd been determined to stay in their homeland until the Nazi occupiers were forced out.

One of their protectors in Poland was collaborating with the Nazis, to better serve the resistance. One night he'd come to them, and told them they must leave Poland immediately. The Nazis had begun building another camp in Belzec, not ten miles from where they were hiding, and it wasn't meant to be a work camp. There were large chambers being outfitted with vents, which the Nazis planned to drop gas through, killing everybody in the room. Huge ovens were being built to cremate the bodies. The Nazi collaborator was terrified, begging the family to leave that night, before they were caught and his family along with them, for all of them would be gassed without mercy. Various resistance groups had smuggled them through Europe until they reached the French countryside, where they had finally been forced to stop, for there was no way to safely cross the channel as a family, and they would not leave each other.

The story had run through the intelligence story like wildfire, its credibility widely debated. The British had recently cracked a German code, but it seemed for once to not have any kind of meaning until then, because nobody could figure out what Eichmann meant by the Final Solution, since it seemed to have no military bearing.

"And then we captured a scientist hiding in a barn in Chamonix who'd been working in a factory of some kind for the Nazis in Nice. He'd fled when he'd inadvertently learned he would be killed as soon as he had no further use to the Vichy regime. He was crazy, Dick. I met him in Lorraine, and, Jesus, he was seriously fucking cracked. He could stop talking about Zyklon B, repeated the formula over and over again like a litany."

"What's Zyklon B?"

"Yeah. I'd never heard of it either. I still wish I hadn't. I wish you didn't have to, either, but like I said, if you don't hear about this from me, it's going to be from somebody else. I'd hate that even more than I hate telling you." Nix drew down deeply on his cigarette, closing his eyes for a minute as he exhaled. Dick had stayed lying on his side while Nix talked, but now he pulled himself up, sitting next to Nix and wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

Nix opened his eyes and looked at Dick, shaking his head like he truly couldn't believe what he was about to say. "It's poisonous gas. Pellets of hydrogen cyanide that evaporate when they're exposed to air. It kills hundreds of people very quickly. Nobody knows the precise numbers, but they think that the Nazis are killing upwards of a thousand people at a time, and then burning the bodies."

Good Lord in Heaven. Dick sat still, unable to move, to talk, afraid of even thinking for a minute. Nix got up and went to the sink, bringing back a glass of water for Dick. "Drink this slowly," he said.

The cold water shocked Dick's senses, bringing relief to his suddenly dry throat. He was aware of his heartbeat thudding through him, and took a deep breath, then two, trying to slow it.

"Dick?" Nix's voice was urgent. "Dick, I think I should go get Roe."

No. Not now. He didn't want to see anybody but Nix right now. He shook his head and managed to say, "Just give me a minute."

"Okay," said Nix, gently. "I'll even give you two. I'm that kind of guy."

Men had died in Dick's arms. Men he had admired, and served with, and sworn an oath to protect. He'd seen dead children, some just babies, or what was left of them after an artillery barrage on the towns where they'd just been playing moments before the bombardment. It all left its toll, made him determined to win this war, to make their sacrifice mean something. But until this moment, nothing had left him so full of rage he was blind with it, chocking on it. He drew in another deep breath, and then another. Nix took his hand, once again twining their fingers, and he clung to that touch, squeezing as hard as he could.

Another minute passed, maybe more, until finally Dick felt like he could talk again. "We're going to get them. If it's the last thing we do, Nix, we will stop this."

"God, I hope so. It's all I think about some days, stopping this. But nobody in high command has even acknowledged it, Dick. They're going to want to cover it up. Because we're going to take them down, but not soon enough. This blood is on our hands, too."

"They can't cover it up, Nix. There's no way to hide what happened at the camp we found today. They sure can't cover up a hundred more like this, especially if they're as big as Sink said. We know. Our men know."

"Yeah," said Nix. "But even if we manage to remember that we're the good guys here, what worries me the most is that Nazis will manage to destroy all the evidence before we get to Berlin. I'm not a particularly vengeful man, but I want somebody to burn for this. Hell, I want every Nazi, from Hitler and Eichmann down to the lowest private, to face up to what they've done."

"Nothing can be erased completely, Lew. They might want to tear down the buildings and burn all the paper and leave nothing for us to find - but they don't have enough time. We showed them that, today. And even where they succeed, there will still be people who will know what happened."

"And they're going to tell us? Just like that."

"We're going to make them tell us," said Dick, with quiet conviction. "And then we're going to line them up against a wall and shot them.

"Dick? You're against the death penalty."

Dick closed his eyes. "Yeah. I'm going to have to compromise my principles somewhat on that one, I think. Like I said before, it's not the first time one of us has had to let go of our moral convictions to deal with the situation at hand over the last three years."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Nix, I don't think even you can manage to blame yourself for this war."

Nix laughed, a short, bitter sound. "You'd be surprised how deep my masochist streak runs. But no, I'm sorry that the world came to this, that you have had to compromise your beliefs like this. I can't even begin to imagine how hard this has been on you."

God, Nix took his breath away. He'd say things like that, words so that were so perceptive and caring, that Dick's heart felt like it might burst from the man's kindness. He didn't say anything, but brought the hand holding his up to his lips and kissed it. They looked at each other in the dim light of the lamps.

"I'm against the death penalty," Dick said, after a moment. "But I think that – I'm against it for people, Nix. There isn't a shred of humanity in whoever put those people in that camp. They're monsters, and they should be destroyed."

They didn't usually talk like this, or at least hadn't since Toccoa, when they discovered they liked talking to each other, a shared love of interesting conversation, and things happened from there. It's never been the right time, the right place, here on the business end of the Allied advance, for a discussion of morality, to debate whether what they were doing was right or wrong. There'd been too many shades of grey along the way for them to make such stark pronouncements. But now Dick could see nothing but black and white, and he knew that no matter what they'd done, what they still had to do, to win this war, would be worth it.

And he'd do it with Lewis Nixon by his side.

"I have something for you," he said, somewhat abruptly. He wanted to break this mood, to move them past this place where death and misery lingered. There'd be more of that soon enough.

Nix took let out one last deep breath and then nodded, raising his eyebrows. "Well, hand it over, whatever it is. If it's nice enough, I just might forgive you for skipping Valentine's day this year. In fact, I don't think you brought me a birthday present, either."

They'd made it through three years of training and war, brought hundreds of men through the fires of hell, and through it all, they'd never really needed words to be on the same page. Dick had to grin at that, at Nix. "It's not with me. It's in Zelinsky's foot locker."

"Hey, where is Zelinsky? He was the one hole in my plan, because I wanted to make sure he was out of the way tonight, and I couldn't find him."

"Apparently Zelinsky and General Taylor's orderly were at basic together. They haven't seen each other in a while, and after today - well, we should all get a chance to spend time with our friends tonight." Dick knew that despite everything, he was smirking, because he rarely got to be the devious one. Nix always beat him to the punch.

Nix laughed, and this time it was low and delighted, a sound Dick hoped he'd spend the next fifty years trying to get Nix to make, one way or another. "Oh, and I'm the one accused of plotting to get us some time. You wanted me to come by tonight. This must be some gift."

"Vat 69. A case of it."

"No." Nix looked stunned for a minute, and then ridiculously pleased. "You devil, hiding it in Zelinsky's foot locker. I checked yours, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"Jesus, Dick. How the hell did you manage to get your hands on a whole case? I've bribed every PX guy from here to Aldbourne, and I haven't been able to track down a bottle."

He smirked again. "Rank occasionally has its privileges. I'm sorry it's not here tonight. I couldn't get to it before I sent Zelinsky away."

Nix laughed again and kissed him. "Oh, I think I've got everything I need tonight."

"Yeah?" Dick asked, reaching for him.

"For now," said Nix, touching Dick's cheek. "I'm not making any promises about later."

They kissed, again, and Dick knew that Nix was lying. They'd made promises to each other a long time ago, and though every once in a while they might lose sight of them, they'd yet to break one. He didn't think they ever would.


End file.
